Blue Mountains Theatre, September 21 8/10 Xylouris White don’t do polite folkloric music. They direct-inject us with the culture that spawned the blood and fury of such characters as Theseus. Nor are they obsessed with priggish, academic authenticity. In an age when music groans beneath so many sub-genres as to make them all obsolete, George […]

Riverside Theatre, September 3 7/5/10 Freedom has no greater expression than music. African Americans have largely defined popular music’s last 100 years by voicing their post-slavery resilience, and, amid countless examples, explosions of musical culture occurred as the Irish survived English oppression and non-white South Africans survived apartheid. Uyghur musical culture may not have been […]

City Recital Hall, August 22 6/10 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The euphoria of the end of the war to end all wars – with its consequent artistic, social and sexual bravado – collided with the crunch of the Great Depression and then impaled itself on the rise […]

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About John Shand

John Shand is a playwright, librettist, author, journalist, drummer and critic. He has written about music (and occasionally theatre) for The Sydney Morning Herald for over 20 years. His books include Don’t Shoot The Best Boy! – The Film Crew At Work (Currency), Jazz – The Australian Accent (UNSW Press) and The Phantom Of The Soap Opera(Wizard). In 2017 he won the inaugural Arts Journalism Award at the Walkleys, the nation’s preeminent awards for journalism. He lives in Katoomba (NSW) with she who is called The Mouse. He enjoys wine, and wishes he could say in moderation.